Sunday, 21 April 2013

Lars Iyer - Exodus

This is a good book for thinking and it's an especially a good book when you are not reading it. It encourages thought. Basically it's about thought, or the lack of it, or where thought is going (the ethics of badminton) and where it's been (University of Essex) or the capitalist consumption of everything. It's very darkly funny. As Scott says, 'Capitalism turns everything in to money', and this is the novel to go on the side. In fact, I just find myself staring at the Mies chair and wondering which lamp might go with it, and thinking that thought very profoundly each time I put this book down. For those who enjoyed Terry Eagleton's After Theory, this is a novel (pun intended) equivalent. Very clever, but don't expect fun things, or indeed anything, to happen, this is a book about thinking. You have to wait for thinking to come to you.